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Originally Posted by Bob M.
REPLY: That rule still exists in Fed, but I've never seen it exercised. Actually, one official in the area used to ask whether the scored-upon team wanted to kickoff or receive after the try...got some mighty strange looks I've heard.
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Go back far enough and it wasn't uncommon to choose to kick off. I did see that in a CFL game televised to the USA during an NFL strike, when a team with a considerable lead had already been burned once via the onside kickoff and so chose to kick off themselves as a preventative. Of course that's when they were still kicking off from the 45. The onside kickoff is more of an attacking threat in Canadian than American football for several reasons, but moving the line for the kickoff back to the 35 weighed heavily against that.
AFAIK the option is also there for the team that scores a safety touch to kick off from their own 35, or at least it was for some time in both CFL & amateur.
The original rule was as in soccer -- you get scored against, you kick off. That's when the kickoff was from midfield and kicking off was more advantageous than now. In the 1880s the kickoff could simply be tapped & picked up by the kicking team, although they changed that well before the century turned. The option to receive wasn't introduced until the USAn field was shortened and the kickoff moved to the 40.
Rugby Union just a few years ago introduced the option to have the other team kick off after they score, via the variant known as Hong Kong Rules for the Hong Kong 7-a-side tournament. Seems to be the standard way to play 7s now.
It wasn't advertised, but the NFL ca. 1980 abolished the option to kick off after having a TD scored against you, but kept the option to kick off after a FG against for several years. Don't ask me why.
At times in USAn & Canadian football (much later in Canadian) the team that had a safety scored against them had a choice of free kick or scrimmaging a new series, same spot either choice. A touchback once conferred the same choice in American football.
Robert